“The sport’s shiny femininity, coupled with its sheer acrobatic wonder, seems to beckon parents and girls the way the green light beckons Gatsby.” From “What a Great Gymnastics Movie Should Be,” by Meghan O’Rourke.

“The wall and its comments, all those ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and, yes, even the once-maligned News Feed are so powerful because they make our grooming of one another more public.” From “Why Are We Still on Facebook?,” by Maria Konnikova.

“The theme of these Games is simple: this is Putin’s pop-culture reassertion of Russia, a worldwide media-saturated insistence on its modern power and capacities, all done with a flash and a reach that no diplomatic summit could ever match.” From “Putin’s Games,” by David Remnick.

“There is probably a better way to help prisoners of conscience, and it may have nothing to do with music.” Sasha Frere-Jones writes about Amnesty International’s human-rights concert in “Ready to Die.”